Fade Into You
by mel.wolfgirl
Summary: Summary: "The space in between them has always been insurmountable on any given moment." Oneshot, TIC-verse, post-B4. Written to Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You"


A/N I wrote this as a thank you for all the kind words, support, and prayers still being sent my family's way. Every single one is deeply appreciated. Much love, Mel.

Title: Fade Into You

Summary: The space in between them has always been insurmountable on any given moment. (TIC-verse, post B4, written to Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You")

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><p>Worn guitar strings strum softly beneath his fingertips, his touch gentle as he coaxes a richer sound from the instrument across his lap. She knows better than to watch him, because right now he's at his most vulnerable, and she is too, and they both know that if their eyes meet, someone's going to see the other's insides. So she watches his hands instead, wonders at the callouses that have built there on wolf skin, wonders at his capacity to do something so carefully as handling the strings.<p>

He watches her toes, and when they wiggle, he repeats the chord. He liked that one too.

It's quiet tonight, the way it's been for the last couple years. She's back and he's never going to get the chance to leave, not when it's quiet or loud. His place is here, and her place is where she decides that day. He doesn't take for granted that she'll stay, and she doesn't take for granted that she will either. They are the opposite ends of the same spectrum, but the distance between them is a few inches and a song he's been writing for her for a long time now.

The song isn't finished, and those inches could easily become miles. The Alpha is getting restless, is listening to the words of another Packmate—another imprint—being whispered into his ear. They know that he will leave if the ancient wolf doesn't come back soon. If the Alpha leaves, so will she. He will stay, because the last time will be the last time. He left behind too many pieces too far from home, and they are afraid of losing the rest of him. She was never anything but pieces in the first place, so it doesn't matter how many she sheds.

When she looks off to the west, across the ocean that they sit beside, he knows she is getting restless too. He's brave enough to go with her, but the space between them has always been insurmountable on any given moment. She can take chances, but he has to accept what chances the Alpha gives him.

She wiggles her toes again, and he smiles slightly. Restless or not, this is how she prefers to spend her days.

Her eyes are always up and his are always down, but it's easier to see what he's doing like that. She's stretched out at his side, belly and throat exposed as she plays with the sand between her fingertips, multi-colored grit that would be too uncomfortable for others to lay upon. The salt of the Pacific is sharp in her nostrils, the breeze a soft rushing in his ears. His nose is better than hers, and his hearing is finer tuned. She is faster, frighteningly faster, and that matters when it matters. It's not mattering right now, though, and his ears are focused on more important things. The change in her breathing as he changes tempo, the beat of her heart beneath the slow rise and fall of her breast.

It's hard to finish her song, because she's not finished yet. He isn't finished either, and his own songs are louder, harsher, rougher. Hers is smoothed at the corners and weathered into a softness brought on by time and repetition, not from anything inherently soft from the start. Eyes a color that he can't describe turn his way, and she looks down at his hands again. He looks up, but not at the ocean. He looks at nothing at all, because he'll never be able to see anything past what is inside him, and sometimes what is inside those within his reach. The sand is nothing to him, the driftwood and the shoreline are simply there. He looks up because she's looking down. Memorizing him, eyes flickering to the callouses on his fingers. Always wondering, as if somehow he's a mystery.

He doesn't know how he got them either, but wolf skin was only as strong as the strength used against it. It was the delicate, the weak, that cut them down into pieces, that made them harder. It isn't battle that has worn her down into softness, but gentle attention from a hand more subtle than their Alpha's touch. She came back this way, and as he plays, he adds a chord for someone he never knew, someone taken from her too.

She smiles because that chord is better than her song, brighter and more powerful to have lingered all this time. On a whim he plays it again, because good things are meant to be remembered. At least, that's what others say. He hasn't found a way to remember the good, he's still trying to forget the bad, but he's not her. Her gift is the ability to keep moving forward. He has been forced into a corner of his own making, and until he becomes someone other than himself, in that corner he will stay.

Eyes he can't describe glisten, so he adds a rippling chord for their Alpha, then dances his fingers over the chords with mocking flightiness for her former lover. She laughs because he's never really liked that wolf, tells him he's mean without saying a word, relaxes back into the coarse sand because he can get away with anything with her. There isn't anything that he can do that will be beyond her forgiveness, and he takes advantage of that most of the time. He's her favorite, and he's fine with that. He knows he's earned it honestly, she's the most honest thing he's ever done.

Quietly he strums her something new, something that he's been saving just for her. She's his favorite too, and they both accept it being that way.

The space between them is insurmountable, but as her eyes close, he knows that he's the closest that any of them are ever going to get. They can weather her until she crumbles apart, bits of broken, water polished stones that will never be the sweet soft sand so many others become. They can hold him in place, but the pieces he's lost will never come back, and he'll never be more than less of a whole.

She inhales deeply, smelling their Packmates in the distance, and he stills long enough that wolf ears won't hear them. This affair is an affair all their own, and no one else is invited. The Alpha shifts further inland, taking the others with him. Giving her these moments, giving him this space.

Her song isn't done, and neither is his, but there's one song he finished long ago. Back when she wasn't frighteningly fast, and he was the only one of them that could scent fur beneath the salt in the air. Back when her hand was the only one left to hold onto. Back when he still couldn't look into her eyes, back when he felt relief instead of guilt in sleeping against her side. It is their song, and it's as complex as it is raw, it's as sweet as it is painful. Fading from her and into him, twisting them together in ways that all the other chords, all the other songs could never comprehend. And when they are left alone, it's this song that he always plays.

He doesn't watch her toes and she doesn't watch his hands. He's learned a long time ago what she likes, and she knows his greatest strength lies in those callouses, cutting into him a little deeper each day. Never once do they lock eyes, at least, not until his last chord fades beneath his silent fingertips. It doesn't matter what they see, not now, not ever. Nothing could be worse than the worst they'd already accepted in each other, secrets unspoken that will never be forgotten, an understanding as intangible as their breath mingling on the wind.

Then he smiles slightly and she laughs softly, because he's picking back up his guitar. Her wiggling toes are all he needs to find another chord, to find another way to stretch across that distance. He is still her mystery and he is only careful with the strings and her. Insurmountable is only a word, and her fingertips are playing with the sand closer to his hip.

Together, they will finish this song no matter how long it takes.


End file.
